An Internet of PHP

[Macrobius]

Basically Web 2.0 is stll there. Interesting article.

https://timotijhof.net/posts/2023/an-internet-of-php/

Me: Yes, the aughties web is still there, including the Circle of Crust. It will probably never get a 'tech refresh' except but simply be replaced with something else. Part of the reason for the massive 'number of websites' deployment is the 'shared hosting' model of the pre-cloud era.

Ah yes. The 'blogosphere'. In 2003, the 'weblogs of war' == warblogs == 'blogs, arose as an echochamber for Neo-Liberal Hate Speech against Iraq.

It 'succeeded' in the pre web 2.5 era precisely because it scaled to the 'long tail' of the web, and was the cheapest option. Cheap and good enough always wins 'at scale' if you don't need push notifications anyway.

If you want PHP to last, you'd better containerise it and down your vintage websites in the cellar for a later year methinks, because it's going to get harder and harder to solve

Another interesting take from @Buglord

Are Websites Poorlier Designed than used to be?

Websites today are much poorlier designed than they used to be, in my view. In the incipient stages of Internet, the exiguous bandwidth of Internet connexions mandated a paramount emphasis on cybernetwork optimisation & parsimony, with the aim of guaranteeing that capacious & intricate websites...

www.thephora.net

 

[Buglord]

Considering that PHP is 80% of the internet (Was sort of shocked to find that out) and that most sites are sadly just wordpress it makes me question what exactly was the point behind all of the "Gurus", "Courses" and "Alternative Languages" that developed over the last decade. I remember vividly that Drupal was setting up to be a strong challenger to Wordpress as a CMS (1% of market share now) and that JS frameworks were what you needed to survive and thrive with "coding bootcamps" popping up to create more coding monkeys. I feel cheated. Was PHP always going to be so dominant and I just did not see the signs?

 

[Macrobius]

Considering that PHP is 80% of the internet (Was sort of shocked to find that out) and that most sites are sadly just wordpress it makes me question what exactly was the point behind all of the "Gurus", "Courses" and "Alternative Languages" that developed over the last decade. I remember vividly that Drupal was setting up to be a strong challenger to Wordpress as a CMS (1% of market share now) and that JS frameworks were what you needed to survive and thrive with "coding bootcamps" popping up to create more coding monkeys. I feel cheated. Was PHP always going to be so dominant and I just did not see the signs?

I think the answer to your question may be similar to 'why bother going to a family restaurant when you can just go to a McDonald's or Taco Bell?'

The internet worked at scale because 'shared hosting' was cheap and easy enough to set up -- anyone who can't figure out cpanel has a relative or business associate who can.

There is a certain segment of the population that can't install software unless they have a 'wizard' and can click 'next' and it works. If they have to make choices on the screen they are lost.

This is the same segment of the population that feels a sense of R-E-L-I-E-F that they won't have to read more than 140 characters at a time.

I think your question amounts to... why is it easier to use Word Press than set up Ruby on Rails?

Combined with, why does PHP run faster than Ruby on Rails (or nodejs etc) if I do so. There's a reason Facebook runs on PHP.

The short answer: everything else gets in the way of most people (waiting for page loads or cognitive complexity of the task)... we live in world where only high end populations like East Asians can use SMS ('texting') successfully.

The real competition (in a technical sense) to WordPress is probably the Fediverse -- which I suspect would be much more popular if it were named something else. I mean, why didn't they just name it 'Gay Nigger Cunts from the FBI'? Worst marketing name ever.

PHP is the Millennial version of COBOL.